


Scars Unseen

by rizascupcakes



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 00:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12120654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizascupcakes/pseuds/rizascupcakes
Summary: In the years following the war, Riza Hawkeye and Roy Mustang attempt to rebuild their lives and their trust in each other.





	1. The Disappearance of Elizabeth Sawyer

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to Until Tomorrow. While it isn't necessary to read that fic to understand this one, it does provide some background information and is something I will be referring back to throughout.

Autumn arrived overnight, dredging up a fine mist that hung over the river and a familiar bite to the early morning air. Riza Hawkeye sipped her coffee with her eyes closed as she tried to recall the rapidly fading memory of last night's dream. It was the first in nearly a year that had not been a nightmare plagued by sand and fire and gunpowder and blood. Something in the cool night must have reminded her of home, for that is what she dreamed: those familiar woods where she had spent most of her life. Those woods she would never see again. She had scarcely even thought of them since the day she had left with a single trunk and the weight of eighteen years of memories slipping from her thin, freckled shoulders with every mile the train put between her and the only place she had ever known.

For one delicate moment, Riza felt fiercely protective of that girl, with her light heart and her mother's best dress. Another girl from another life. A small puff of air—not quite a sigh—escaped Riza's lips as she opened her eyes again. The moment had passed and she had a stack of reports in front of her. It was no use for Riza-the-soldier to cling to Riza-the-dreamer now that her coffee was gone and there was work to be done.

"More coffee anyone?" Jean Havoc asked a little too loudly. With one exception, the rest of the team looked up from their work. Vato Falman continued reading as though no one had spoken. One by one, the rest of them returned to their work with small shakes of the head and Havoc shrugged. "Just me then? Suit yourselves."

He pushed his chair back and stood, towering over the rest of them. Riza watched him leave with a thousand other memories fighting their way to the front of her mind. She exchanged a quick glance with Heymans Breda, and he shot her a tiny smile. For one fleeting moment, they were back at the Academy, though the scene was tinged with the kind of melancholy suited to a grey September morning.

When Havoc returned, Riza was finishing her report on the previous day's investigation of a disappearance. The case still hadn't been solved, and she had a suspicion that the Colonel would burst in sooner than later to tell them they were heading out again. She didn't mind days in the way Havoc did—the way the Colonel did—but today she hoped that she was right. She needed something to distract herself from slipping into her thoughts again. There would be plenty of time for that when she returned to an empty apartment that still did not feel like home.

Her prediction came true an hour later. The door swung open and Lieutenant Colonel Mustang stepped inside, the skirt of his coat twisting around his calves. "Hawkeye. Havoc. Come with me."

"Where are we going, boss?" Havoc asked. He was already on his feet with his coat folded over one arm.

"There's been another disappearance." Mustang's dark eyes flickered with a familiar anger that Riza had once hoped never to grow accustomed. It was far too late for that now. She removed her coat from its hook and draped it over her shoulders, never taking her own eyes from the man. There was something else in his face that was indecipherable and it troubled her.

A slight drizzle awaited them outside, casting an even heavier shadow over the Colonel's demeanor. He walked with shoulders hunched against the rain. Trailing slightly behind him, Riza and Havoc walked in silence. The turns they took through East City were familiar and Riza's heart grew heavy with dread as they approached her building. A few military police lingered at the entrance.

Elizabeth Sawyer lived three doors down from Riza. She had an easy smile and wavy, strawberry-blonde hair. Though Riza kept mostly to herself, Beth was the kind of person who would chat with anyone she met in the elevator, and so Riza stepped forward to tap her Colonel on the shoulder as he went over the report from the M.P.s.

"Sir," she said when he turned to look at her. "Beth had a cat. I know the M.P.s have been in and out, but there should at least be a mention of it in the initial report. Is there?"

Mustang frowned at the pages in his hands as he skimmed them briefly before shaking his head. "It's probably out hunting."

"It was an indoor cat," Riza said.

Roy took another glance at the report before handing it to her. "You were her friend. Maybe you'll be able to find clues I'm missing in this."

 _I wasn't her friend,_ Riza wanted to protest. A friend would have invited Beth over. A friend wouldn't have brushed her aside the second the elevator reached the lobby on what might have been Beth's last day alive. Years ago, the guilt of that realization would have crushed her. Now it was just another weight among a thousand others and all of them heavier.

She read the report all the same, looking for details. Beth's boyfriend was the one who had reported her missing. She had the day off but when he called her earlier that morning, no one had answered. She had gone out with friends the night before but she had gone home early, claiming she was tired. No one could say for certain whether she made it home or not. There was no sign of a struggle in the apartment, only a missing woman and a missing cat with no explanation.

There didn't seem to be a single connecting factor between Beth and yesterday's missing woman. According to the description, Laurel Tomson had been tall and slender with straight brown hair. She was ten years older than Beth and lived on the other side of the river with her husband, who had reported her missing after she failed to come home from work.

"Havoc, I want you to bring the boyfriend in for questioning. Sergeant Jones will take you there. Hawkeye, stay with me."

Havoc saluted as he left, and Riza stood alone before Lieutenant Colonel Mustang for the first time since he had asked her to be his bodyguard three months prior. The silence that stretched between them could fill an ocean. At length, Mustang spoke again: "Tell me everything you know about Elizabeth Sawyer."

And so she did. She did not know much, just half-remembered details from superficial conversations in the hallway or the elevator. All the while, the scar tissue on her back itched and ached and she could not help but wonder if that sensation was born from shame for from all the unspoken words that hung in the air between the two of them. _This was your fault,_ some bitter and broken part of her wanted to scream at him. _This was my fault,_ she reminded herself, biting back all the accusations she wanted to hurl at him. He had tried to refuse, to talk her out of it with that silver tongue of his. But she had known better than to let him. It was a lesson she had learned far too late and at far too great a cost, but she had learned it nonetheless.

That indecipherable expression on Mustang's face gave way at last to one she recognized, but his sympathy only stoked the anger already blazing in her chest. She turned on her heel and went to the bedroom to see what the initial investigation might have missed. To be alone. For she knew that Roy Mustang would not follow her into a bedroom—not now, not ever again.

She opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape, the metal ringing beneath her boots. After a few attempts, she discovered that the window was easy enough to open from the outside and made a note to find a way to bar her own. The rain had made the stairs treacherous, but Riza followed them down all the same. Five floors up and even the fear of falling couldn't touch her when the fear of encountering Mustang after storming out on him already had a monopoly on her heart.

There was nothing out of the ordinary on any of the levels, and she slid down the ladder to inspect the alley. The nearby dumpster had been emptied earlier that morning, as it was every Wednesday. Any evidence that might have been left there was long gone now, and she wondered if whoever had taken Beth had been counting on that. He could have been watching her for months for all Riza knew. Defeated, she looked up at the falling rain, hoping to find something that would ease her heart. Instead, she saw a head poking out from the kitchen window of Beth's apartment.

"Find anything?" Mustang called down to her.

"No, sir," she shouted back. "Just rain."

Several minutes later, Mustang appeared on the ladder and dropped to the ground beside her. "I can make it back to headquarters by myself," he told her. "Take the rest of the day off." She started to protest but he held up a hand. "That's an order, Lieutenant. I can tell you're upset, and I need you at your best."

"With all due respect, sir, I am perfectly capable of remaining on this case," she said, anger welling up inside her once more. Dismissing her for being too emotional—who the hell did he think he was?

"Lieutenant Hawkeye, I gave you an order. Can you follow it?" His eyes bored into her and she realized this was a test. It wasn't the first time she had questioned an order, wasn't the first time she had refused to follow one, and she realized now that he needed to be sure that she didn't intend to use their history as an excuse to flout commands and endanger a mission.

Her lips twitched slightly. "You gave me another order first, if I recall correctly. Are you sure you'll be okay by yourself in this downpour?"

"I appreciate your concern, Lieutenant," he said with a half-smile of his own. "I'll take a cab back to headquarters."

"Very well, sir," she said. He was within rights to dismiss her from a case with such a personal connection, and she was afraid that arguing with him at this point would lead to an end of the carefully constructed peace they had made with each other by remaining tight-lipped on anything that had happened before she entered his command.

"If you don't make it into the office tomorrow, we'll tear East City apart to find you," he promised, and then he was gone, striding down the alley and into the downpour and leaving Riza alone with her jumbled thoughts. She looked at the fire escape that would lead up to her own apartment, and decided to take it rather than facing the crowd at the entrance that had likely grown since she had arrived.

By the time Riza hauled herself through her bedroom window, she was exhausted in a way she hadn't expected. She stripped away her rain-soaked uniform and donned a pair of warm, dry pajamas. Though lunchtime had come and gone, her appetite had yet to arrive and so she made herself a pot of tea instead and sat on the sofa with the mug warming her hands and her knees tucked up to her chest. Even though she was under orders to take the rest of the day off, she couldn't help but try to piece together a connection between the two missing women. Both had disappeared without leaving a trace or a witness, but that was simply the mark of a skilled kidnapper. It was unlikely that there were two in East City at one time, but not impossible. With her eyes closed, she tried to recall the report she had read in Beth's apartment and the report she had written that morning.

The answer she needed, however, was not in either of the reports, but in a conversation she had all-but forgotten. Riza slopped tea down her pajama shirt in her haste to get to the phone when she remembered. She gave the operator her code and a moment later, she heard Mustang's voice.

"I thought I told you to take the day off," he said, a note of concern behind his exasperation.

"I remembered something that might be important," she said.

A pause. "Go on."

"Last week, I met Beth in the elevator on my way home. She told me she was supposed to have met her boyfriend for dinner but he was staying late at the office. Apparently this had been going on for some time and she was starting to suspect him of having an affair with his boss: an older, married woman by the name of Tomson." Riza hesitated for a moment before continuing, "Havoc didn't find the boyfriend, did he?"

"There was no one home when he arrived," Mustang said. "Thank you, Hawkeye. I'll send someone to see if he went into work today."

The line went dead and Riza hung up her phone. The rain provided a welcome respite from silence that would otherwise have overwhelmed her. She finished the tea that hadn't spilled and carried the mug to the kitchen to refill it before going to her bedroom to change into a clean top.

Instead of returning to her sofa, she settled cross-legged onto the bed with a dusty photo album. She took a sip from the mug on her nightstand before opening it. The first pictures were mostly of her mother, and they were the ones she was looking for. Emily Hawkeye in the early years of her marriage was as familiar as Riza's own reflection, and the biggest difference between the two of them these days was how desperately unhappy Riza looked when there was no one around to see her. Her mother had been happy up to the end, always full of laughter and love so infectious that no one who had known her ever had an unkind word to say about her. For one small moment, she felt tears burning in the corners of her eyes and she rubbed them away before they could fall. Emily Hawkeye was dead and buried and not even alchemy could change that.

Lightning flashed outside Riza's window, accompanied by rain that came down heavier than it had all day. A few seconds later, thunder crashed and Riza flinched hard. Shaking, she got up from the bed and went to the kitchen to fill her mug again. She was halfway there when she dropped it and the ceramic shattered on the floor. Cursing, she swept up the pieces and threw them away. Once, she would have left them in a neat pile and asked Roy Mustang to fix it, and he would have presented the repaired mug with a flourish. Now, she didn't even bother to call and remind him to take a cab home, and she knew he wouldn't call to see how she was holding up.

Back in her room, with the rest of the tea forgotten and slowly growing cold, she made her way through the rest of her mother's life, closing the book before she could reach the long stretch of empty pages and a single photo from 1902's harvest festival that she couldn't bear to look at anymore.

When she returned the album to its shelf, she hesitated before taking the book next to it. Riza knelt on the floor and let the treasury of plays fall open in her lap, as it always did, to a page marked with a dried inflorescence of lilacs. For a moment, the storm on the page and the storm outside converged in a single storm inside of her and she ripped the dried flowers from the page with the intention of crushing them and throwing them out, but something in the delicate purple petals stopped her. They had meant something to her once—had meant everything. Beneath the scar tissue now, she could feel the phantom pain from her tattoo and she remembered that those same flowers she had been so intent on destroying only a moment before had given her courage in the painful days and weeks that had followed her father's careful embedding of his research into her skin.

With trembling fingers, she returned the flowers to their page and the book to its shelf but she did not rise from the floor. She was trapped in another memory: the rest of last week's conversation with Elizabeth Sawyer and a question she had never answered. _Have you ever been in love, Riza?_

Shaking, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled toward the bed. _Have you ever been in love?_ It was a question she had answered before: with laughter, with lies, with a shot of vodka and a refusal to elaborate. Now she wasn't entirely certain how to answer a question like that. The girl with thin, freckled shoulders and her mother's best dress had been in love, but Riza Hawkeye could not remember how to be that girl anymore, even though she had kept her dress and her book with the flowers and her photo album. Love was a thing that got good people killed. It had killed her mother, it had killed whatever had once been good in her, and it might very well have killed Beth by now. Love, she decided as she dragged the covers up to her chin, was a thing best left untouched.


	2. Afraid of His Own Shadow

Roy Mustang did not sleep all night, though not for lack of trying. At some point after midnight, he downed what was left in a nearly-empty bottle of whiskey, but even that could not keep him from tossing and turning. Earlier in the night, before the thunderstorm had died down, he had twice picked up the phone only to hang it up again without dialing a number he shouldn't have known by heart but did anyway. When he picked it up a third time, a little past one in the morning, he called Hughes, but no one answered. He was probably at Gracia's for the night. Roy hung up and hugged his pillow to his chest, wondering what it would be like to hold someone he loved instead. It had been so very long since he had that he could scarcely remember what it was like.

He was wrong to send her home. He had known that immediately, and he had spent the rest of the day wondering at the back of his mind if he had sent her to the same fate as Laurel and Elizabeth. She had been within rights to tell him he was abusing his authority, and hell, a part of him had hoped she would even though he knew that it would mean trouble for both of them if word got back to the higher ups. With a sigh, he ran his hand down his face. He knew perfectly well why he had sent her away, why he had accused Riza Hawkeye of all people of being too emotional. There were a hundred reasons, and they boiled down to one essential truth: he was a jackass.

It all would have been so much simpler if he had let her go and put all memory of Riza Hawkeye behind him. She had accused him of forgetting her once, and he wondered now if there was ever a time when he could have done so. Abandoning a person was not quite the same as forgetting her. In his nightstand was a photograph that had spent the better part of the last seven years gathering dust, and he knew that, even if he dismissed her from his command tomorrow, he would not be able to throw it out.

The clock showed a quarter hour past two now and he had long since resigned himself to a sleepless night. He switched on the lamp and opened the drawer to fish out the photograph with tattered edges. As he stared at the faces frozen in time with a tender expression on his face and overpowering guilt in his heart, he wondered how many days in her life Riza Hawkeye had been happy. Once, he could have asked her and she might have told him. Now he was as good as a stranger, and her private matters were no longer his to inquire after. She was a bodyguard, a war buddy, a subordinate. That didn't leave much room for her to be a what-if, a regret, a long-lost friend. He had promised once to look after her, and here she was, tasked with looking after him.

With as much delicacy as he had left in him, he returned the picture to its hiding place. He kicked the covers from around his feet and lifted the back of the futon until it resembled a sofa rather than a bed. He went to the kitchen and rinsed the sour taste from his mouth with water from the tap. The first dull ache of a hangover had already begun to settle over him and he resigned himself to not only a long day but a long week as well. Not for the first time since arriving in East City, he found himself wanting to go home. It was a strange, nebulous sort of longing, and he was never quite sure what it meant. Most days, he found himself wishing for his old bed above Madame Christmas's bar, with his strange, assorted family of his last living relative and the girls she had taken under her wing. But on other days, he could think only of the woods. Tonight was one of those nights, and he was perfectly aware that it was his argument with Lieutenant Hawkeye, his stolen glance at a moment that felt like it had taken place seven hundred years ago, that had him missing the countryside.

He remained in the kitchen for the rest of the night, and as dawn began to lighten the storm-grey sky, he brewed a pot of coffee. His hangover had arrived in full-force and the caffeine did little to ward against it, but at least it dulled the exhaustion that had begun to settle over him in the past half hour.

The mood in the office when he arrived was even more somber than it had been the day before. Lieutenant Hawkeye's face was set and her eyes looked sadder than usual. Lieutenant Havoc had dark circles under his eyes but he didn't appear to have touched his coffee. Perhaps the most distressing of all was the look of abject horror on Kain Fuery's face. The kid was barely eighteen, fresh out of high school when Roy had recruited him. An enlisted man still half a boy and utterly unprepared for the horrors that came with military life. Roy felt a twinge of regret that he hadn't sent the boy off to Central to find some radio station to work for. Just a twinge and that was all. With one last sweeping look at the men in his command, he barked out his first order of the day: "Report!"

It was Breda who answered, hesitation in every word. "There was a body in the river this morning. An autopsy is being performed right now, but Laurel Tomson's husband confirmed that it was her. He's being held for questioning downstairs if you want to speak with him, sir."

Roy sank into an empty chair and massaged his temples, hoping he looked more thoughtful than hungover. "Lieutenant Hawkeye, did you see or hear anything unusual in your building last night?"

"No, sir," she said.

He allowed himself to feel the relief he had been holding back since he saw her sitting in her usual chair. It had been ridiculous to fear for her safety when she had no real connection to the victims, but he had been worried all the same. He wondered if she knew he hadn't been exaggerating when he told her he would tear East City apart to find her if anything had happened. He wondered if she had found it insulting. Regardless, he was enough of a coward that he would never know. He had left immediately afterward so he wouldn't have to see the answer in her face. Three months of working together and he was still doing everything in his power to avoid being left alone with his bodyguard. He supposed that one of these days they would need to be able to speak openly, but for now, he was content to hide behind his shame and spend as much time away from her as possible.

At length, he stood again. "I'll go speak with the husband. Hawkeye, Havoc, with me."

Alfred Tomson was a small, mousy man in his late thirties. His face was puffy, red, and tear-streaked, and though Roy was far from a mind-reader, he knew at once that the man across the table was innocent. No man who truly loved a woman could have harmed her.

 _You could_. _You_ did. The soft rebuttal came in Riza's voice from the deep recesses of his mind. Beside him, she stood still, and when he dared glance her way, he swore he could see the outline of her scars through the thick wool of her uniform. His stomach churned.

"Mr. Tomson," Roy began after clearing his throat, "what can you tell us about your wife's disappearance?"

The man looked up, a lifetime of grief written across his face. "She—she never came home Monday night. A-and now she's d-d-dead." He burst into tears and buried his face in his hands. Havoc held out a handkerchief, though it took a few moments for Alfred to notice it. He accepted gratefully and blew his nose.

"Was there anyone who might have wanted her dead? Any enemies? An ex-lover, perhaps—yours or hers?" Roy asked.

"There was no one," Alfred whispered. "Everyone loved Laurel."

"Everyone," Roy echoed. "What do you know of a man named Evan Peters?"

Alfred frowned. "I can't say I've heard that name before."

"He worked for your wife and he's been missing since yesterday morning," Roy said.

"I don't understand. Laurel disappeared two days ago." Alfred dabbed at his eyes with the handkerchief before looking up at Roy with a puzzled expression.

It took a moment for Roy to decide how best to put what Hawkeye had told him the previous afternoon. "We have reason to believe that your wife was having an affair with the man."

Roy was convinced Alfred was about to start crying again, but instead, he began to laugh. "Laurel? An affair? This has to be a joke. She said she was having problems with one of her staff, but an affair? Not her, not my Laurel."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Roy closed his eyes. "No further questions. Havoc, see that this man gets home safely. He's been through enough."

Chair legs scraped back, followed by footsteps and the sound of a door opening and closing and just like that, he was alone with Riza Hawkeye once more. Few would have believed it, but the Hero of Ishval had a coward's heart, and while it would have— _should_ have—been so easy just to talk to her, to ask if she was holding up alright, he couldn't even open his mouth. All he could do was leave the room with her following in his wake like a sad and restless ghost.

The autopsy report was sitting on Roy's desk when he returned to his office after dismissing Hawkeye to assist Breda and Falman in compiling a list of Evan Peters's friends and family. He sank into his chair to read it as rain lashed against the window behind him. His stomach turned as he looked at the photographs and so he set them aside face down. Laurel Tomson had been strangled to death the previous afternoon and thrown into the river just before midnight. From the bruising on Laurel's neck, the medical examiner concluded that the killer had small hands. With bile rising in his throat, he set the report aside. It was all starting to make sense to him—the missing cat, the conversation in the elevator. When he received the call only moments later that another body had been found, he knew before he was told that it was not Elizabeth the M.P.s had found.

Twenty minutes later, the rain was falling harder than ever and Roy stood with Lieutenants Hawkeye and Havoc in a riverside warehouse on the outskirts of town. Evan Peters had been found at last, naked in the middle of the concrete floor with a gaping, bloody hole where his cock had been. His pale skin seemed bloodless and judging by the knife-marks scattered across his abdomen, he had died from blood loss.

"Hell hath no fury, eh, boss?" Havoc said in a thin voice.

But it was Hawkeye whose reaction troubled him the most. The change in her face was subtle, something only a person who knew her as well as Roy would notice. The horror etched into her face, the realization in her eyes. He had never seen her look so at a loss for words, and it would have been so, so very easy to cross the distance between them, to put a hand on her shoulder and reassure her that she couldn't have known from elevator small talk what horrors her seemingly-sweet neighbor was capable of.

But he made no move, offered her no comfort. Instead, he ordered the M.P.s to cover the body and wait for a medical team to arrive. There would be another autopsy report before the day was out, but that would have to wait. In the meantime, someone would have to find Elizabeth Sawyer and bring her to justice.

As the three soldiers made their way out onto the quay, Roy turned his collar up against the rain. To his left, Havoc hunched over his lighter to keep the rain off until the end of his cigarette began to glow. He tucked the lighter in his pocket and placed the unlit end in his mouth. The air was chilly enough that Roy was half-tempted to ask for one himself. When he glanced to his right, Hawkeye was gone. She had moved to the edge of the river and was staring out at the murky grey water as though she could not feel the cold. Whatever her thoughts were, they were a mystery to him.

For the first time, concern won out over his fears and he strode over to her. "Are you alright?" he asked.

She shook her head but gave no other indication that she had even noticed he was there. Her brown eyes seemed far away as the wind ruffled her short hair. North, he realized. She was looking north. Toward home.

"Lieutenant," Roy began softly, hesitantly, "I think we should talk."

She looked at him over her shoulder, and the wistfulness in her eyes had died, giving way to ice that seemed so foreign to their usual warmth. "There is nothing to discuss. Sir." She turned away from him then and headed back toward the warehouse, leaving him alone with only Havoc and the smell of rain and smoke for company.

The atmosphere back at headquarters when they returned was even heavier than it had been when they had left. Roy excused himself from the rest of his team while they filed paperwork in a subdued quiet. Alone in the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and tried to convince himself that this was going somewhere—the investigation, his career, his determination to make things as right as they ever could be again. He had thought when Hawkeye had appeared in his office that it had been something of a ceasefire, a tentative peace between them. It had been a fool's hope, but then, when had he ever been anything else where she was concerned? He had been so determined to let her go, to leave the military behind as she had wanted. But he had needed a bodyguard and it had seemed something like fate when he had learned that she was still enlisted. Though he could blame only himself for her involvement, he knew she carried guilt to match the blame she laid on him. He had taken advantage of her trust, had turned her secrets into a weapon in spite of his lofty promises, and she had every right to hate him for that. But he was also the one who had led her down this path, had inadvertently convinced her to throw her fate to the Amestrian war machine as well. For that, he could never blame anyone but himself.

He splashed another handful of water across his face but he could still see the accusation in her eyes on that first day they had met on the battlefield. A ghost from the past. His biggest regret. If he had just _listened_ to her, if he hadn't been a thrice-damned coward too afraid of disobeying orders to do the right thing, none of this would be on her shoulders. _And maybe, she wouldn't hate me now,_ he thought, ashamed of himself for it. That was the least of his concerns, and it was no less than he deserved.

Back in the office with the rest of the team, he sat as far from Hawkeye as he could manage and waited for the autopsy or for news of Elizabeth Sawyer or for the damned rain to stop or—or for anything to distract him from the disquiet in his heart. And so he was relieved when the door opened and a staff sergeant poked his head in to say, "They found her."


	3. Chapter Three: A Man Obsessed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and comments! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Riza was on her feet before the staff sergeant finished his first sentence. _Have you ever been in love, Riza?_ Beth's voice was taunting now and she had hoped the rain would drown it out on the quay but it had not, and then Mustang had approached her, tried to comfort her as if he knew that he was one of those ghosts that had been haunting her lately. As if he could win his way back into her heart so easily when they both knew she was here to atone. To help him to the top and keep him safe so they could begin to undo the damage they had caused.

The staff sergeant led the same trio that had set out to the warehouse through the maze of corridors and back out into the rain. Before they could get into the car, Mustang held out a hand to stop his Lieutenants. "Why wasn't she brought here for questioning?" he asked.

"I'm not sure how many questions a dying woman can answer, sir," the staff sergeant replied.

The woman in the emergency room bed was unrecognizable. Her hair was limp and dirty around a face that looked like a corpse's, though her chest still rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths. Her skull had been fractured in two places and her wrists were broken beneath swollen purple skin. The doctors said that it was unlikely she would live through the night, and less likely still that she would ever wake up. Riza felt sick with guilt that she had been so quick to believe that Beth was behind the two other murders, and while Havoc stood in the corner looking ill and in need of a smoke, while Mustang spoke with the man who had found Beth, Riza bent down and whispered, "I'm sorry."

Mustang returned shortly thereafter. "Call headquarters, tell them to bring Alfred Tomson back in for questioning."

"You really think that man is capable of something like this?" Havoc asked, gesturing toward Beth's broken body.

"No, of course not. I want to know more about the man Laurel was having trouble with." Mustang paced back and forth while Havoc went to make the call, never once looking in Beth's or Riza's direction.

"Where did they find her?" Riza asked.

"They say they found her hanging half out of a dumpster down an alley off Pike Street," Mustang said, still pacing without looking at Riza. "She was still conscious and she appeared to have pulled herself out from under a pile of trash. Her legs were still pinned and she passed out before the ambulance arrived. It's amazing she held on as long as she did, if what they say is true."

For the first time since he had entered the room, Mustang looked at Riza, and she felt the weight of his gaze pushing her down on her, something like pity in his eyes. Not for the first time, it made her want to hate him, but anger and resentment weren't quite hatred, and they were the best she could muster for now, and so all she could do was glare back at him, challenging him to say something. Daring him to broach the subjects he had been too cowardly to address at every turn. She wanted to scream at him all the things that have been festering in her heart ever since they returned from the war. _Coward. Liar. Traitor._ A thousand times she had cursed him in her head, and a thousand thousand times she had cursed herself. She knew she had every right to blame him for betraying her trust, for abandoning her, but she had no right to condemn him for staying and murdering when she herself lacked the courage to say no to a war she knew was wrong.

But a hospital room was not the place to dredge up bad blood between old friends, between old lovers, and so she held her tongue. "We should get back to headquarters," was all she said, and when Mustang nodded, he turned away. _Have you ever been in love, Riza?_

As he left, Riza crouched down beside Beth's bed and placed a gentle hand over her bloodied knuckles. "Last week you asked me a question," she said, her throat thick with the curses she had refrained from hurling at her commanding officer. "The answer is yes. Yes, I have, but how I wish that weren't true."

With one last glance at Beth, Riza followed Mustang out into the hall. Her heart felt a hair lighter for having told her secret. It felt a mountain heavier for standing beside him and knowing what hopes she once had held for the two of them.

Those memories only made it harder to see how broken Alfred Tomson had become following his wife's death. When they arrived in the interrogation room, he looked ten years older than he had that morning and she knew before he spoke that he had seen Laurel's body.

"You said this morning that your wife was having trouble with someone at work," Mustang said, sounding as though this were a friendly chat over lunch rather than part of a murder investigation. "Tell me everything you know about that."

Alfred hesitated at first, and then he told them—in stumbling, stuttered words—of a man who had worked at Laurel's shop from the very beginning, who had grown resentful of a younger man Laurel had taken under her wing and made her assistant. Laurel had fired him the week before and her assistant had taken on extra hours to pick up the slack until she could find a replacement.

Riza listened in horror as she realized that there never had been an affair, and that one man's jealousy had killed at least two people. Alfred had never learned the man's name, but he told them it should be on one of Laurel's old ledgers in the shop. He slid a key across the table, and Mustang slipped it into his coat pocket with fingers just as capable of murder as the ones that had held Beth's hands to Laurel's throat. Mustang ordered Havoc to escort Alfred home and post a guard outside his apartment; he ordered Riza to come with him to the shop, and all the while her trigger finger itched and burned and she could not shake the irony of two murderers tasked with bringing a third to justice. A quick glance at the man beside her told her that he was keenly aware of the same. Now that they were alone, he made no attempt to conceal his guilt. Not yet twenty-five, he looked closer to forty in that moment beneath the street lamp outside an abandoned shop on a chilly September evening.

He opened the door and held it open, a gesture born not out of chivalry but an unspoken order for her to sweep the shop before he entered. When she had determined that it was empty, she motioned him inside. While she stood guard, he examined the ledger, a frown coming over his features as he flipped through the pages. "Tomorrow's your birthday, isn't it?" he said. "Do you have any plans?"

She shook her head. With everything that had happened, she had completely forgotten the date.

Mustang looked up from the ledger. "Tell you what, I'll let the team off early and we'll all go out for drinks, my treat."

"That's—that's very kind of you, sir, but completely unnecessary," she said.

"Nonsense," he protested. "How many birthdays have you spent alone? You don't need to add another to the list."

She bit her tongue to keep from reminding him that her last birthday had been spent in Ishval. Before that, she had been in the Academy, and Rebecca had made the same offer, dragging Riza and Havoc and Breda on an ill-advised night to a nearby bar where they had played that eventful game of "Never Have I Ever" when Riza had silently confessed her heartache. And before that… Her back throbbed with the phantom pain of a thousand needles all at once and it took every ounce of control to keep it from showing on her face.

"If you insist," was all she said, and he returned to the ledger without another word on the subject.

There was nothing for Riza to do but wait, and while she kept an eye on the door, she wandered the shop, looking at all the little figurines on the shelves that lined the walls. A sign on the wall said they were handcrafted and hand-painted, and it was a relief to know that here was something alchemy had not touched. Most of the figurines were animals, but she spied a park bench with a couple that so strongly resembled Alfred and Laurel that it made her heart lurch painfully. She moved on to examine a Dalmatian with bright eyes and a tail caught mid-wag.

"Jason Koch," Mustang said triumphantly and Riza tore her gaze away from the porcelain dog. He had already picked up the phone and started to dial headquarters as Riza made her way over to take a glance at the ledger herself. His name was listed alongside the words _severance pay_ and a generous sum.

While Mustang issued the warrant for Jason's arrest over the phone, Riza moved closer to him, hand on a gun. She knew he had most likely fled East City for good, but she still did not want to be caught unawares if Jason Koch were the kind of man foolish enough to return to the shop after everything he had done.

Several moments later, Mustang hung up the phone again. He stared past Riza with a set jaw as he said, "Elizabeth Sawyer is dead."

The next several hours carried a soft-around-the-edges dreamlike quality as dark, rainy streets blended into harshly lit hospital corridors. Somewhere, Beth's parents were still sobbing. In the morgue, the day's third murder victim grew colder and stiffer on a table, nothing like the kind, vibrant woman she once had been. Even the office where she had spent nearly every day for the past three months seemed ethereal tonight, as Havoc and the M.P.s who had searched Jason's apartment reported that he was long gone and that there were no pictures to be had of the man save for a quick sketch drawn up by one of his neighbors. It seemed unlikely that he would ever be found.

By the time Riza returned to her apartment, it was nearly midnight, and she cast her uniform aside to step under the hot spray of the shower. By the time she stepped out of the bathroom again, she had been twenty-three for nearly twenty minutes, and her phone was ringing. She answered with some trepidation, which dissipated as soon as Rebecca's voice came through the line.

"I've been calling you for ages now, Riza. Why didn't you pick up? I was starting to think you didn't tell me you found a man to take you home tonight and I was pissed because I wanted to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday." Rebecca paused for a breath, leaving Riza room to respond.

"For the last time, I'm not interested in dating at the moment," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose with exasperation. "Thank you for the birthday wishes, but I need to get to bed. It's been a long day."

"I heard you were investigating a murder," Rebecca said in a low voice. "What was it like? I've been out of the Academy for months now and I've never gotten to do anything like that."

"The woman three doors down is dead, Rebecca. I'm not in the mood to chitchat right now. We can talk later. My team is going out for drinks after work tomorrow—tonight—and I'm inviting you. Goodnight." Riza hung up the phone before Rebecca could ask more questions. The thought occurred to her that Rebecca and Beth might have been fast friends, had she lived in Riza's apartment instead. If Beth had had a true friend, rather than an irascible acquaintance, would she still be alive? That was not the kind of path Riza's thoughts needed to go down tonight, and she chased it away as she got into bed. Once she was asleep, however, it was no longer so easy to banish unpleasant thoughts, and she slept restlessly through her nightmares.

When she arrived at headquarters after not nearly enough sleep, Riza was greeted by Rebecca, who held out a donut most likely swiped from her unit's break room. She appreciated the gesture nonetheless and accepted a bone-crushing hug once the donut was safely in her mouth.

"I'll meet you here after work, birthday girl," Rebecca said as she let Riza go; she didn't even give Riza a chance to say goodbye before racing back toward her wing of the building.

When Riza entered her own unit's room, there was already an enormous mug of coffee waiting for her, and the entire team wished her a happy birthday in unison. In spite of her exhaustion, she couldn't help but smile. In those few, blissful moments, she felt incredibly fond of all of them, even Mustang, but the feeling was short-lived. As soon as she had taken a sip of her coffee, Mustang cleared his throat.

"Jason Koch is currently the most wanted man in the Eastern Region, but there hasn't been any sign of him. Until there is, we really don't have much to do aside from paperwork, so it looks like we have a long day ahead of us." Mustang leaned against the wall when he had finished speaking, already looking bored at the prospect. In spite of his promise to let them all go early so they could celebrate Riza's birthday, she couldn't help but feel the same.


	4. Of Fates Entwined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos!

The twenty-third of September passed for Roy with a sense of restless anxiety that had him on his feet for most of the day. The sun had returned at last, bringing with it vivid colors in the leaves along the riverbank. Between each report, he wandered aimlessly back to his staff room. He told himself it was just to see if they had any new leads, but he knew that was far from the full truth. It was Hawkeye's birthday, and in spite of everything, he wanted to be close to her. Something had shifted in their relationship last night, he was almost certain of it. It was the first time they had talked— _really_ talked—since that first day she had arrived in his office. Even if they never spoke like that again, he would treasure that memory, would cling to the hope that something of her faith in him still remained.

Sometime past three, his phone rang at last, and he answered with his heart in his throat. It seemed too good to be true that someone had found Jason Koch already, and it was. On the other end of the line, Hughes didn't bother waiting for Roy to say hello to begin gushing about his upcoming wedding. "Gracia picked out a dress today. She won't even describe it to me, Roy—she says I have to wait. The wedding isn't until November. How am I supposed to wait that long? You are coming, right? You do know when the wedding is, don't you? We're sending out invitations next week. You have to be there, you're my best man."

"Hughes," Roy said in as polite a tone as he could muster after having been bombarded with all of that. "I'll be there. I promise."

The mostly one-sided conversation killed the better part of an hour, and though it was painful in more ways than one to listen to Hughes go over his wedding plans in complete detail and express what should have been his private feelings for the incomparable Gracia Jones, Roy was grateful that it was now late enough to call it a day. He stuffed the completed reports into an envelope and left it in a box for one of the staff sergeants to collect.

Whistling a tune he had heard on some summer evening by the riverside, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and went to fetch his team. With the notable exceptions of Hawkeye and Falman, they looked as bored as he felt.

"I think we've all worked hard enough for today," Roy said, looking over his team with a feeling he could not place. It was something like pride; it was something like affection, though it seemed almost too soon for either. They were still mostly strangers to him, all except for Hawkeye, and she was something worse than a stranger these days. Perhaps after tonight that would start to change. At least, he hoped it would. He had pulled his team together as spring turned to a summer that carried too much of the desert for comfort, and in that time, they had fallen into a routine of working together that told him he had chosen well. For all the time they had spent together, however, they were still far from the team he had hoped they would be when he had set out. A handful of minor cases and a mountain of paperwork weren't enough to bring people together, and what better way to loosen tongues and open hearts than to share a round or three of birthday drinks for one of their own? He certainly couldn't think of any.

They set off, still in their uniforms, for a lively bar on a back street. Somewhere along the way, he noticed they had picked up another soldier: a woman with dark, curly hair who had her arm around Hawkeye's shoulders. So this was the Academy friend she had mentioned a time or two. Hawkeye's Hughes, so to speak. Judging from the woman's demeanor, he didn't think the comparison was far off the mark. She was loud and cheerful and as distinctly un-Hawkeye-ish as Roy could imagine, and as he looked back at Hawkeye once more, he saw a smile in her eyes that did not quite reach her lips.

Shame burned through him as he held open the door to the bar. If Hawkeye, quiet and sensible, took comfort in the company of someone so loud and outgoing, then what right did he have to be so irritated with Hughes? Even if it were just some petty, misplaced jealousy and a determination to martyr himself on the high road, it was unfair of him to give his best friend the cold shoulder for choosing a different path. As the team and its unexpected plus one settled into the establishment's large corner booth, he made a resolution to apologize to Hughes as soon as he got the chance.

Hawkeye settled into the booth, sandwiched between Academy friends, and it left a disquieting feeling in Roy's stomach not to be sitting beside her. While she was tucked into the very middle, where the booth curved around, he was stuck out on the edge next to Fuery.

"A round the best thing you've got on tap and three orders of wings for the table. Put everything on my tab tonight, Meg," Roy said to the waitress with his most charming smile. She was a recent transplant from Central, and he had taken her out for a riverside stroll on a dry July evening. Back in her apartment, she had told him a most fascinating tale about Basque Grand, who, if Meg were to be believed, failed to live up to the name. That had been more than Roy wished to know, and he was relieved that their date was no more than a front, because he had no desire for his own measurements becoming fodder for gossip among the girls of the Eastern Region. There was already enough speculation as it was, and the jokes playing off of his name left high expectations he had no intention of dispelling.

 _All that aside,_ he thought, risking a glance at Hawkeye as Meg scurried off, _I have no intention of getting into bed with women who call me a hero._ Or any women at all. Havoc was chatting animatedly with Hawkeye and the woman whose name Roy didn't know, and he could not help but feel a twinge of jealousy. So far as he knew, Hawkeye had made no such lofty promises. She was free to bed any man she liked, including Havoc, whose rank matched her own. Two golden-haired Amestrian soldiers from the Eastern countryside who met at the Academy and fell in love when he healed her broken heart after Roy had betrayed her. It was the kind of story they put into novels, and just the thought of it made him wish he had ordered a stronger drink to start.

Meg came back with a tray full of mugs and handed them out before dashing back to the kitchen. Roy held his beer up toward the center of the table. "To Riza Hawkeye," he said, a toast that everyone echoed except the birthday girl herself. Roy could not help but notice that she had a slightly reddish tinge to her cheeks as she sipped the foam from above the rim of her mug.

Drinking deeply, Roy attempted to keep his thoughts from straying toward her again. Oh, it was one thing to think about her as his bodyguard or even as a friend, but instead he found himself wondering how many of his team's birthdays he had missed over the summer, and if he would have done something like this for any of the others had he known. He liked to believe that he would have. Havoc and Breda were laughing fit to burst over some private joke and Roy realized they had been at the Academy together too. Of his team, Falman, Fuery, and he himself were all outsiders, and it was past time for him to start filling in the gaps that divided his team.

"I don't believe we've met," he said, turning to the woman on Hawkeye's right.

"The name's Catalina," she said, looking him up and down with eyes that were almost calculating. "I bunked with Riza at the Academy."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I've heard good things about you, Catalina," Roy said, holding out a hand. When she took it, he thought she was going to crush his bones together. The sensation was unsettling, and it made him wonder how much Hawkeye had told this woman of their shared past.

"Lieutenant Colonel," Fuery piped up from between them, "did you go to the Academy with everyone else?"

Pulling his hand back from Catalina's, Roy shook his head. "No, I went to the Academy in Central, and I dropped out halfway through to become a State Alchemist." He could feel Riza's eyes on him, burning with fully-deserved resentment. He knew it was wrong to stray so close to painful topics on her birthday of all days, and so he excused himself from the conversation by burying his face in his mug.

Breda picked up the gap in the conversation, though thankfully he steered the topic away from alchemy. "It's a shame you weren't there with us. You'd have been in good company."

"He's here now," Havoc chimed in. "And he kept most of us together. Sorry you were left out, Catalina."

"It wasn't just me," Catalina said. "Ross got transferred to Central last month. Isn't that just like men, though? A woman has to be a war hero to keep up in this country." She shook her head in disgust, apparently unaware of Hawkeye's discomfort. Roy was starting to regret suggesting the night out.

To his relief, Meg appeared with the wings and accepted orders for another round of drinks, and the conversation shifted once again, this time to lighter topics.

"Are you going to celebrate with your friends to this weekend, Hawkeye?" Fuery asked.

She shook her head. "Most of my friends are already here," she said. "This is enough for me."

It hurt Roy's heart to think of her spending the weekend by herself, but at least she was here tonight. At least she wasn't spending her birthday alone in some apartment with only the memories of all the birthdays she had spent alone with only her father for company. For a moment, as he caught her eye, he thought she looked as sad as he had ever seen her, but then the moment was gone, and she turned her head toward Havoc to avoid looking at Roy. He gnawed the meat from a chicken wing and the same sauce that coated his fingers seemed to clot in his throat, making it difficult to swallow. He refused to allow himself to consider the other reasons that might have caused him to choke. He washed it down with a swallow of beer and a concentrated effort to put all thoughts of Hawkeye as anything other than a colleague out of his mind. It was easier said than done.

With the second round of drinks sitting empty and a third in hand, Roy was feeling much more comfortable with the whole situation. As he sat back, elbow on the table, rocks rattling around in his glass, he told his team the story of how he had met—and eventually befriended—Maes Hughes. Even though it was a story Hawkeye already knew, she seemed to be listening as intently as the rest of the table. Her cheeks were still flushed, though this time he supposed it was from the alcohol rather than embarrassment. She nudged her lime wedge away from her nose as she tipped her gin and tonic back.

When he had finished, Havoc drained his glass and cleared his throat. "You know how I fell in with these fine people?" he said, throwing one arm around Breda and attempting to put the other around both Hawkeye and Catalina at once. "There it was, first test at the Academy, and I failed. Breda here overheard the lecture I got, and he offered to help me study for the next one. Said he had a good group, and he sure delivered. They carried me through the Academy, especially Breda. We bunked together, so he'd stay up late helping me with homework. Smartest guy you'll ever meet." Havoc gave his three old friends a fond smile before withdrawing his arms to pick up his drink.

Not for the first time, Roy found himself wishing he could have been part of this. Not only to have spent more time with Hawkeye, but to have gotten to know the others as equals rather than as subordinates. It was that barrier, he realized, that made it so much easier for him to think of celebrating Hawkeye's birthday than any of the others. No matter who she was to him now, there would always be a shared history between them where they were not soldiers—not officer and adjunct—but two kids with stars in their eyes lying in the overgrown grass. It was this part of Roy that reminded him with a jolt of the scars and ink that marred Hawkeye's back. Havoc's flirting—if it was flirting—was futile, he realized then. Whether or not Hawkeye returned his feelings, she would never, ever be able to act on them. It would raise too many questions, would place too many suspicions on both of their heads. Whether she still truly believed in his dream or sought only her own redemption, it was not a risk she would be willing to take.

Roy buried his face in his hands for a moment before realizing he was in full view of his entire team. It was not the best moment to reveal weakness, and so he took a steadying gulp of his whiskey instead. Just how much had he cost her without realizing? The thread of their connected lives was too fine to tease apart on a night like this, with laughing companions and a head full of liquor. Their lives had been entwined since the day she had met him on the platform, playing out the story of the crowned serpents that were now embedded in her back.

All the while, the conversation continued around him. Here, Falman made an observation. There, Havoc told a joke. Occasionally, Falman laughed. Whenever she realized someone's eyes were on her, Hawkeye made an effort to look happy. She spoke only when addressed directly, Roy noticed. Even Catalina had to coax her into talking. _At least she isn't sitting by herself in an empty apartment,_ Roy told himself. Riza Hawkeye may have been a quiet and solitary woman, but he knew just how lonely she had been as a child; he knew how much lonelier she must be in this city with all of her friends kept at arm's length. Even if it did not always reach her eyes, at least she was smiling again. It had been so long since he had seen that smile. However many lifetimes of sorrow had stretched between the day he had left her hometown for the last time and the slight upturn of her lips over coffee that morning, he could not say. All he knew was that, as she downed the last of her tonic, he could see the ghost of the young woman he had left behind so very long ago.


	5. Sunlight in Her Hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the wait and for such a short update! Hopefully the next one won't take so long. Thanks for the reviews and your patience!

The weeks that followed, Riza's smiles were few and far between. October rolled in from the river with still more fog, and no word had reached Eastern Headquarters regarding Jason Koch. Riza had attended Beth's funeral, standing at the back in her military dress uniform with a stoic face and guilt clawing at her heart. Caroline Sawyer had approached her toward the end, bright red curls in disarray. "You find him. Whoever did this to my little girl, you have to find him," she had said. Riza, in turn, had offered a hollow promise.

Now, as Riza leaned against the kitchen counter with a mug of coffee in her hands, she wondered just how much of a chance they had at finding the man. She knew all too well how many quiet, lonely places the East held. As she stared out at the dreary grey sky, a memory slipped past her defenses. She had met a soldier in the woods once—just the once, despite his insistence that hunting out of season was a criminal offense he was supposed to put an end to. Had he been searching for someone in particular? Had soldiers gone to her hometown to search the surrounding countryside?

She supposed it would have been a simple matter to ask Mustang, but morbid curiosity was greatly outweighed by both her pride and the hope that he had forgotten their first day in the woods together. It seemed very unlikely that he had. Though the first few months of her new assignment had been tense, she had recently begun to suspect that the resentment she had sensed between them was entirely her own. Apprehension, regret—she had seen these things in Mustang from the start of their new, entirely professional relationship, but she had never felt anything like animosity. It occurred to her then that, to a woman as proud as herself, pity could feel as cruel as hatred. Worse, even, from a man she had once considered her best friend.

A sharp knock at the door startled her thoughts away, and she set the mug aside. Through the peephole, she could see a very impatient Rebecca, arms crossed and dark hair pulled back. Riza opened the door. Before she could even say hello, Rebecca opened her mouth.

"I haven't seen you since your birthday. Riza, what the hell has gotten into you lately? If I hadn't cornered Havoc at the range, I wouldn't have even known you were still alive. Why haven't you answered any of my calls?"

"I—" Riza began, but all the excuses that approached her tongue were empty, and so she swallowed her pride and the lump in her throat. "I should have answered them. I'm sorry."

Rebecca had clearly prepared herself for a defensive Riza, and she looked at a loss for how to deal with the Riza she had found instead. A few seconds of confusion resolved themselves in the form of Rebecca pulling Riza into a hug. "I've been so worried about you. Never do this to me again."

As she returned the hug, Riza tried to remember if anyone had touched her since Rebecca had hugged her goodbye outside the bar on her birthday. It didn't seem likely, and Riza appreciated the contact all the more for it. There had been too many stretches of time in her life without hugs, without so much as even a friendly nudge, and as a result, she had grown almost accustomed to loneliness. It did not surprise her in the least that Rebecca was once again attempting to rescue her from that; she had done the same at the Academy, after all.

"You should come in. I'll make some tea and we can catch up." Riza stepped aside to let Rebecca in, and then closed the door behind her.

It wasn't long before both women sat side by side on the kitchen counter with oversized mugs in hand and steam curling up into their faces. Rebecca had borrowed a pair of oversized wool socks to match Riza's, and the muffled sound of her heels bouncing against the cupboard set a comforting rhythm for the conversation.

"What have you been up to lately?" Rebecca asked. "I never see you at the range anymore."

Riza shrugged. "I've been here, for the most part."

That was clearly not the answer Rebecca had been hoping for. Still holding her mug with one hand, she reached out with the other to give Riza a gentle shove. "You're going to die alone if you keep acting like a hermit, you know."

"Not everyone is as desperate for a man as you are, Rebecca," Riza said coolly.

"It's not just that—you've been ignoring your friends, too. I'm worried about you. We're all worried about you," Rebecca said.

With a sigh, Riza set her tea aside and told Rebecca about the funeral, and about Beth, along with all the guilt Riza felt over not taking the time to listen to her. To her credit, Rebecca listened without saying a word. Not once did she point out that Riza had done the same to her. When she had finished, Riza expected Rebecca to say something, and was surprised when her only response was a wordless and one-armed hug.

They sat together in silence until a sense of belonging came over Riza. It was strange at first, though as she drained the last of her tea, she realized it was familiar as the wildflowers that grew along the road outside her childhood home. Seasonal and fleeting, fragile and beautiful. She clutched her empty mug tight to her chest that suddenly felt too small. _We're all worried about you._ This was not the Academy, and they were no longer as young and carefree as they had been, but she felt immensely grateful to Rebecca and Havoc and Breda. They had been her family once, and she realized for the first time since her return to East City that they still were.

As though she could read this realization in Riza's eyes, Rebecca took hold of it, used it as leverage to pry open the shell Riza lived in these days. It took a bit of coaxing and a pouting, pleading expression, but Rebecca managed to drag her outside and into the thin sunshine that had broken through the fog. Though the trees still held most of their leaves, the few that had fallen were soggy and brown, clogging the gutter and the junction between buildings and the ground.

It was the kind of day that once would have found Riza making every excuse to stay inside, but with Rebecca beside her and the desert dryness that never seemed far from her skin, the damp ground and chilly air were as welcome as her morning coffee. All around her, the city hummed with life. Strangers with brightly-colored scares hurried past with groceries in their arms; children darted through the crowd, their laughter mixing with the music that streamed out of the riverside cafes that already bustled with a Saturday morning crowd.

This was the part of East City where Rebecca had grown up, Riza recalled from the times she had accompanied her friend on leave from the Academy without a home of her own to go back to. Rebecca had asked—had begged, even—on many occasions for even the name of the town where Riza had grown up, but she had let the past fall behind her with the smoke from the train's engine. She was an orphan from a village somewhere in the East, and that was all she had said. It was all anybody needed to know. That she and Roy Mustang had known each other before the war was a secret they carried between themselves. And Maes Hughes, who had kept his silence at their request. Mere days before, she had received a wedding invitation in the mail that had since taken up residence on her nightstand, as if it contained a life of its own rather than just the promise that life did, in fact, go on. As for herself, she was unsure where she fit into all of that, and so she had yet to make a decision on whether or not she would attend.

Roy Mustang would be best man, of course. It was the first thought she had had upon reading the invitation. She wondered if, as his bodyguard, she would be forced to accompany him to Central no matter what. There would be fittings and rehearsals and all the trappings of a wedding that she had never allowed herself to think about, even as a young and decidedly romantic girl. Weddings were for other girls, not for her. It was the kind of practicality born of her parents' elopement. It was the kind of practicality Rebecca had tried to drag her away from.

Biting back her doubts, she turned to Rebecca. "I have a project for you."

"Oh?" Rebecca looked as though this new development were too good to be true.

"I've been invited to a wedding and I could use some help picking out a dress."

Rebecca's face lit up brighter with every word until her smile was almost enough to draw one from Riza. For a moment, it was just like being back at the Academy, and the fleeting nostalgia came with the jarring realization that Rebecca had changed very little since then. She was older, sure, and perhaps a little more mature from the responsibilities that came with the job, but for the most part she was still the same Rebecca she had always been.

Still bubbling over with enthusiasm, Rebecca dragged Riza into a familiar shop. Brightly colored dresses hung from racks and Riza noticed that, just as before, most of them would not cover her tattoo. Each rack she leafed through held the kind of dresses that would suit another woman perfectly. Even Rebecca was starting to look discouraged as she shoved aside another backless dress. It was here, after all, that Rebecca had learned Riza's terrible secret. After Rebecca had passed Riza the third strapless dress in a row, she had nearly broken down in that dressing room. It was a testament to the strength of their friendship that Rebecca had never spoken of that day to anyone, had never even asked Riza about the similarity between her tattoo and the markings on the Flame Alchemist's gloves. She had simply promised to keep it a secret when Riza had explained why none of these dresses would work and then helped Riza with the arduous task of coating her entire back in makeup before every physical examination.

"Try this one," Rebecca said after they had combed nearly the entire store. It was a plain dress, not particularly suited to Rebecca's taste or for a party, but it had a collar and it was the right size and so Riza took it to the dressing room. The scarlet fabric was soft as a dream, and as she twirled in front of the mirror, Riza could see no sign of scarred or tattooed skin. The bodice was almost too tight around her chest and the skirt was certainly shorter than Riza would have chosen for herself, but it was good enough for one night.

Fighting back her self-consciousness, Riza unlocked the door and stepped out to show Rebecca. "You're beautiful, Riza," she said, pulling her into a hug. "Every guy at that wedding is going to fall over himself to take you home."

Riza certainly hoped they wouldn't, but she refrained from mentioning that to Rebecca. Instead, she simply returned the embrace, holding tight to Rebecca and the rapidly fading memories of happier times. "Thank you," she said before she pulled away.

"You're welcome." Rebecca gave Riza a gentle shove. "Don't be such a stranger next time, okay? I'm here for you, whatever you need."

Riza looked away, unable to meet Rebecca's eyes. A shopping trip was one thing, but she doubted that she would ever be ready to open up to her about Ishval or even more than a hasty, half-brushed aside version of her childhood. What she needed, as much as she hated to admit it to herself, was an honest conversation with Roy Mustang.


End file.
